Valentine in Boston? That’s Entertainment

Bobby Valentine brings to Boston the experience of more than 3,000 games managed for the Texas Rangers, the Mets and the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan.Credit
G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

Now the fun begins.

It may not always be fun for that most fervent of franchises, the one known as Ye Olde Towne Team.

It may not always be fun for that sometimes tortured genius known as Bobby V.

It may not always be fun for that formidable windmill in the Bronx at which Bobby V was born to tilt his lance.

Actually, it will probably be the most fun for Mets fans, who can sit back in their own impoverished Dark Ages and watch the Northeast rivalry take an entirely new form. Mets fans have understood the real Bobby V ever since that day in 1999 when he wore the Groucho mustache in the dugout.

Bobby Valentine won a pennant in Queens with regular outfielders named Agbayani, Payton and Bell. Some Mets fans have long harbored the belief that he would come back to Flushing and have a second run. This is much better.

Terry Francona won two World Series in eight seasons with the Red Sox, coming out of the same division as the Yankees, who won one during that time.

Valentine gets to manage a talented team that self-destructed late last season in circumstances that are still murky. He has to restore discipline and confidence with a franchise that, like the Yankees, has no patience for rebuilding.

He will be confident that he can. One can envision him on his long flight back from Japan, coming up with dozens of plans for reviving the Red Sox. He will be designing defensive alignments for the iconic ballpark, lineups to put runners on base, pitching rotations, home and away. Any manager would. But Bobby V seethes with ideas.

When he managed the Mets, a reporter could sit in his office during one of his twitchy meetings with the news media, and he would keep us busy with one section of his active brain, but you could see his half-smile flickering with other ideas, other tangents.

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Sometimes it was fun to ask him about Japanese baseball. This is one of the best things about Bobby Valentine: not only did he successfully manage the Chiba Lotte Marines, but he questioned the traditions of long workouts and pitchers throwing every day and playing for one run — and he did it in their language. He tilted at windmills in another culture.

Fans could not characterize him as a disrespectful gaijin because he did it from within, from knowledge and from love. He led cheers with the fans. He made jokes in Japanese. Now he tries to leap another cultural gap — managing Ye Olde Towne Team.

They care about the Red Sox in Boston in ways different from Yankees fans or Phillies fans or Cardinals fans. This wonderful city and region are extremely involved in the Red Sox, since the current ownership spent tons of money to build and rebuild the franchise.

The fans want more, and the communal pressure, including in the news media, reflects that. They take every game extremely seriously. If Bobby V tinkers with the lineup or the rotation or the strategy, he will give his reasons — Bobby V always has his reasons — but he will be scrutinized more intimately than he ever was in Texas or Queens.

Two years. That is what a Yankees fan I know is giving Bobby V in Boston. Two years to clash with management or build up a prickly relationship with a star or two, or irritate the writers or the fans. In Queens, it was always possible, at least for me, to smile and say, “That’s Bobby V for you.” But in Boston they take this stuff seriously.

He’s a lot like Billy Martin. That’s what my Yankees fan correspondent says about Valentine. The man leads a much more stable life than the tortured perennial Yankees manager ever did, but his mind is constantly in ferment, and he does not suffer fools easily.

For all that, this is a confident hire by Messrs. Henry, Werner, Lucchino and Cherington, the Boston brain trust. Bobby V will have no qualms about challenging the stale and the comfortable who came apart last fall. He was never shy about critiquing his own players.

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In 1997, Valentine told reporters that he thought Todd Hundley, his regular catcher, was not getting enough sleep. Hundley did not appreciate that. Neither did some others in the Mets’ organization.

“I don’t get paid enough to have a relationship with that guy,” Hundley said. “You couldn’t pay me enough.” Then Hundley, the son of a major league catcher, added: “The manager’s never your buddy. He’s your boss. That’s the way I look at it. He’s not out there to hit and catch and throw. We are. That’s the emphasis. I can’t worry about how good friends we are.”

Whatever happened in the closing weeks of the Francona regime, some Red Sox starters are not likely to treat the team clubhouse as their personal pub during games. Bobby V would probably describe the menu to the public.

Two years? That’s a Billy-and-George timetable. The more structured Boston management did not make this move without thinking about it. Management can budget some time for smoothing things over. It also hired the best manager out there. Now the fun begins.

E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on December 1, 2011, on page B17 of the New York edition with the headline: Valentine in Boston? That’s Entertainment. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe